


i can't change my ideas, i can't put out the fire (1/1)

by la_victorienne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, always-a-girl!Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2018-10-15 10:45:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10555022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: So, all right, he would chase her. If he knew which one of her were real.





	

She knocks at his door in September with the softest of touches, a world away from her usual curt, professional raps. At first he's not sure it's actually her—the chain of cryptic text messages still on his phone notwithstanding—but she's staring at the peephole, her cats-eye makeup smudged, and he swings open the door with her name on his lips.

"Don't," she interrupts, pushing through with her bags on her shoulders. "I needed somewhere to lie low for a while and you were the closest. Don't read into it what's not there. Capisce?"

For the first time in his life, he thinks before he speaks. "Yeah, Artie, 'course. D'you want to put your stuff in the guest room? I'll make you a cup of coffee. Got a job to run, then?"

Well, what else is he supposed to say? He somehow doubts that "I'm so glad to see you" would have garnered the instant release of tension the offer of coffee did, and anyway Eames makes no habits of confessing his undying love for people who make a regular practice of shooting him in the head, however true or undying said love might be. Arthur just nods and disappears down the hall.

Eames sighs. It's going to be a long night.

 

 

 

Among other things Eames does not make a habit of are telling very good point men how to do their jobs, working on extractions or research for extractions he isn't being paid for, and cleaning house—well, at all.

Somehow, when Arthur is involved, he ends up doing all of these things, and with the added humiliation of a frilly apron.

"Damn it, Jack, if you 'just try to help' one more time I am going to shoot you in the kneecap. Which, let me be the first to assure you, hurts like hell."

"Right," Eames replies. "Well. I'll just, er, finish the laundry, then. Indian or Thai for dinner, darling?"

He receives the dulcet click of Arthur's Beretta cocking in response and beats a hasty retreat. "I love you too, pet," he calls as he goes, only slightly bewildered by the entire episode, and goes hunting in the takeaway menu drawer. The Beretta is gone when he brings in the Vietnamese, and she lets him sit at the table with her.

Oddly enough, he considers this progress.

 

 

 

Honestly, he thinks. What's the harm in getting comfortable?

 

 

 

The answer comes in October, right as Eames is starting to hope Arthur's job lasts forever, but not so late that she's noticed that he's in no hurry to run a job of his own. They have an unspoken routine, an ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies, and neither of them will acknowledge that they're used to the other, or that they both leave their doors cracked at night, in case the work comes back to haunt them.

Sooner or later, it always does.

It figures that even in her nightmares Arthur is calm and composed, her voice muffled, her spasms restrained. Another man might miss it—Dom Cobb probably _has_ —but Eames is awake after the first rustle and cry, eyes wide and adjusting to the dark.

In all the years he's known her, he never thought he would hear her _need_.

"I'm here," he's saying, although she can't hear him. He runs his hands up her arms, pulls her to sitting, tucks her body into his own, until her head is in the crook of his neck and her wrists pressed against his chest.

He has a moment to appreciate how frail she seems without her armour on before one good shake wakes her up.

"It was a dream," he soothes.

"Prove it," she hiccoughs angrily.

He has no doubt she means her totem.

He kisses her anyway.

He realizes it's he who's dreaming when she kisses him back.

 

 

 

The day he stops dreaming really _can't_ come too soon.

(Nightmare or not, he still gets up to check on her. There's moonlight on her face and she's got one foot out of the covers, tan against the white sheets. Something in him wrenches abominably.)

 

 

 

There's a job in December, but he doesn't take it. He goes to his mum's house instead, helps Kitty trim the tree, carves the goose. When their mum and Kitty have gone to bed he sits with his sister and stares at the fire in the grate until she makes him tell her everything.

"Everything" might mean something different to Eames than to Alice, but he's pretty sure he tells her enough to satisfy, since the three of them—a coven, he calls them fondly as he kisses the upturned cheeks—make him go back to his own flat by New Year's, "just in case."

 

 

 

At least champagne still tastes decent when he drinks it alone.

 

 

 

Ariadne calls in April, and this time he takes the job. Apparently she and Saito and Fischer and Cobb have this avant garde partner parent pseudo familial living arrangement going on. Eames doesn't ask; he's sure he doesn't want to know.

(This is just the lie he feeds the four of them. Yusuf says it's Ari and Robert who are shacking up, and that Cobb and Saito are just playing surrogate father figures for the both of them, but Eames knows kinky when he sees it and there's something about the whole deal that sends his meter off the scale.)

(But hey, speculating on everyone else's sex life is a thousand times better than asking if Arthur will be joining the rest of them.)

(Of course, ten minutes later, he's bored.)

"Hey, Ari, is Artie joining us? Only it doesn't feel the same without her, nobody to entertain me, and all."

"Missed me, did you?"

He gropes for his poker chip before turning around.

 

 

 

The dreams are worse, with her around. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised that his own subconscious is such a damn tease, but being around her during the day and with her at night smarts all the same.

He takes to keeping a hand in his pocket at the warehouse, especially when he can see her. _This is real_ , he reminds himself, as she secures her hair in a twist with a chopstick and a lock falls loose almost in the same instant. _And this. And this._ By the time they run the job in June (which goes off without a hitch, and doesn't that seem a little too easy) he knows she's caught him staring, but he also knows which one of her is real.

He'll trade dignity for sanity any day.

 

 

 

(Don't go, she asks him.

I have to, he says.

But you love me. Don't you? Isn't that what this is? Isn't this called love?

No, he tells her. This is madness.)

 

 

 

It's September again before she finds him, coming through the back gate in his mother's garden. Kitty and Alice are picking spinach alongside him; he's rooting for carrots; Clare herself is in the kitchen, frying bacon with the windows open so they can all laugh and shout at one another. Arthur stands in the hyacinth until he sees her, which he says takes only a moment and she says takes a good ten.

She's frowning.

She's _real_.

 

 

 

The story as he spins it to Ariadne involves the world standing still, the breeze dying down, Arthur's head framed in a halo of golden light, and absolutely no dirt on his hands when he takes her face in them.

Arthur herself thins her lips and shifts him out of the way of the camera's eye. "That's shit," she says flatly. "He ruined the collar of my McQueen coatdress and I got mud on the heels of my favorite Manolos."

Ariadne's expression is as bewildered as Eames' own.

Robert saves the day, clucking in sympathy. "Thank you, Robert. At least some of us can appreciate quality."

"I'll give you an appreciation of _quality_ ," Eames mouths into the bend of her shoulder, and flashes an all-too-innocent smile at Ari's waving image. "Hate to kiss and tell, bit," he says cheekily, "but we really were just checking in. Give love to the kids?"

Ariadne is still laughing when Eames shuts the computer with a click.

"You know," he says, conversationally, "I don't think we've christened the kitchen counter yet."

A pretty flush rises in Arthur's cheeks, and Eames knows without checking that her breathing is quicker and her collarbone is warm. "No," she replies, "I don't think we have."

Neither of them watch to see where the totems fall when they land.


End file.
